


not broken, beautiful

by BeStillMySlashyHeart



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24825562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeStillMySlashyHeart/pseuds/BeStillMySlashyHeart
Summary: You're born with the name of your soulmate written on your skin. Everyone knows this.The very few who don't have a name are doomed to a short life without love. Everyone knows this.Alex Manes doesn't have a mark. Everyone knows this.Everyone is wrong.
Relationships: Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 12
Kudos: 303
Collections: Roswell_Favorites





	not broken, beautiful

Alex’s mark had been covered his entire life.

That wasn’t an exaggeration. To date, the only people who had seen it were his mother, the doctor who birthed him, and the nurse who handed him to his mother. The second his mother saw the mark she covered it up and lied to whoever asked about why.

It had remained covered ever since. His father and brothers were under the impression it was a male name and it was this shame that made his mother hide it and caused his father to never ask to see it. His brothers had tried to get him to reveal it when he was younger, a new form of torment he recognized even as a young child, but neither he nor his mother ever even revealed its location so they had no luck. 

In the military, he used makeup to cover it up for his physicals and proudly named himself one of the unmarked. The unmarked made up less than 5% of the world’s population and usually comprised those who would die young, before they could meet their mates. It was said that forgoing a mark on these unfortunate souls was the universe’s kiss of death; bare skin was a warning not to make any plans for a long life.

Alex was fine with the world assuming he was one of those. When his unit was ambushed in Afghanistan he started to believe that he’d told the lie so many times it had come true. He woke up in the hospital a week later convinced the universe had made a mistake. Three of his squad mates had marks but hadn’t met the women they belonged to yet. They hadn’t made it out and yet somehow Alex had. 

Alex with his broken mark. He got to live and they didn’t. It wasn’t fair. 

—

He was four when he started to really understand. His mother had always dabbed her makeup on his skin when no one was looking and called it their little secret. It was a game to him at first. Could he be a good boy and not tell anyone that he wore mommy’s makeup? 

Yes. Alex was very good at being a good boy.

Because not being good meant yelling. Sometimes directed at him, most times not. He didn’t want to get his mother in trouble so Alex didn’t tell anyone about the makeup. Or the mark it hid. 

His brothers’ marks were displayed proudly. On their hands, their legs, their necks.

_Ella_

_Claire_

_Kara_

Alex’s was different. He didn’t understand why or what it meant but he understood enough to know that different was bad. His father made sure of that. 

They thought it was a boy’s name. He heard them say it. They sounded mean when they said it but they never sounded unsure. Alex had stared at his mark in the middle of the night when he was supposed to be sleeping, a flashlight lighting up the little tent he made of his bed sheet, and it wasn’t a boy’s name. It wasn’t a name at all.

His mother left when he was ten. She made him promise never to reveal his mark, not to even mention where on his body it was in fear that someone would try to find it, and she left him a large supply of makeup to cover it up. 

She didn’t try to take him with her. 

Two years later his father seemed to finally accept the lie that his mother had told, that Alex was destined for another boy, and made his disapproval known. Alex knew then, if he’d had any doubts before, that he could never show his mark to his father. He wasn’t sure the mark would survive the meeting. 

—

Alex was seventeen the first time he wished his mark was a name instead of what it was. He’d fallen in love with a beautiful boy and he wanted to keep him forever. More importantly, he wanted to belong to him.

But Michael didn’t have a mark. Not unless he was better at hiding it than even Alex was. His skin wasn’t perfect, too many scars marred it, but it _was_ free of any names. Alex had checked. Thoroughly.

Michael thought it was great. The two of them, free from destiny’s interference, he called it. He said they were free to make their own choices, to fall in love with whoever, not who their skin told them too.

Alex liked the idea of it. He liked the idea that he could choose Michael and be chosen in return, simply for who they were. But the lie burned him from the inside out. Every time he touched Michael, every time he kissed him, he felt the mark on his skin as a tangible thing. Because, for better or worse, Alex did have a destiny. There was someone waiting for him, even if he had no way of figuring out who. 

Or what. The mark really wasn’t clear.

What was clear was that though people regularly dated and even married people who didn’t match their mark, no one with a mark had ever been with someone without a mark. Not for more than a night. It was just asking for heartbreak.

And Alex had had enough heartbreak already.

When his father brought home the enlistment papers, Alex signed them. It was better to leave than be left, right? Better to get out _now_ , get away from Michael now, then suffer his loss when the world tore him away.

The unmarked never got happy endings.

—

At 27, he wakes up in a hospital and his first thought is of his mark. He had no idea how long it had been since the accident, no idea who had touched him or bathed him or seen his bare skin. The thought of strange eyes on him, on _it_ , made his skin crawl. 

He waited until he was alone before checking. A breath of relief fled him when he found his synthetic skin intact, the edges of it visible against his skin but it clearly hadn’t been removed so Alex didn’t care. He ran a finger over it when the nurse came in to check on him. 

“Your records show that you’re unmarked,” the woman said, blunt as only a military nurse could be.

“Yes they do,” Alex agreed.

She smirked. “We didn’t remove it.”

“I know.” Alex paused. “Why not?”

She busied herself recording his vitals. “It’s none of our business, Captain.” She looked at him. “Your mark is yours. If you want to lie to the US military about it, far be it from me to expose you.” She winked.

“Thank you,” Alex told her sincerely. 

“You’re welcome.”

She left and came back half an hour later with a new chart and her makeup bag. When she left the room, the makeup bag stayed on the table next to him in easy reaching distance. By the time she came back, even the edges of the skin patch were unnoticeable. 

Even so, in the quiet hours of the night Alex found himself running a finger over it, tracing the mark he couldn’t see, hadn’t really seen in years, the shape of it ingrained in him. Some said that soulmates could feel each other’s pain, even before meeting. With a sad look at the empty space at the end of his right leg, Alex hoped they were wrong. Whoever his soulmate was, he hoped they never felt his pain.

—

It wasn’t even a year after his accident that Alex started to understand. The mark had blemished his skin every second of his life and he’d never understood until he knocked his father out and broke into his command center to rifle through his secure files.

Aliens. Aliens were real.

It was the stuff of science fiction and Alex desperately wanted to scoff in disbelief. He might’ve too if Michael’s photo hadn’t popped up on his screen, a warning labelling him a dangerous threat underneath. Hell, he still might’ve if the next thing that popped up wasn’t a long scroll of text that wasn’t in English. 

It wasn’t in any Earthly language, actually. And yet, Alex knew it. 

Strange symbols with no meaning to him whatsoever filled the screen and Alex’s heart stopped beating. 

A pressing need for air forced him to breath after a few seconds but he was frozen in place. He knew that language. Knew it like the back of his hand. Or-

“Aliens are real,” his father’s voice jolted him out of his head and back to the present. “And they are more dangerous than you could possibly imagine.”

It all made sense now. Why his mother had hidden his mark from his father, of all people. Why letting his father know he was gay from the time he was born was the better solution, even though she had to have known how homophobic he was. Better he was gay than fated to an extraterrestrial. 

—

Michael was an alien. Alex’s mark was in an alien language. It seemed too good to be true.

Except the part where Michael still didn’t have a mark. And Alex had no idea what his mark actually said. It was entirely possible that his mark didn’t say Michael.

It didn’t stop him from getting his hopes up. It didn’t stop him from going to Michael and trying again after having avoided him for so long. 

It did, however, make him frantic to decode the language. The sooner he had a clear answer, the better. Once he knew for sure, one way or the other, he could go back to Michael with a clear head and a plan. 

It was weeks before he figured it out and even then it was only thanks to Kyle. 

“Why is this so important?” Kyle asked for the third time as Alex ignored him to try and install a translation service based on the information Jim had left them.

“You never know what secrets my dad could be hiding.” The official, and unofficial, story was still that Alex didn’t have a mark. If that changed, if Alex admitted the truth, it wasn’t going to be to Kyle.

“In the alien language?” Kyle asked skeptically.

Alex shrugged, his fingers flying across the keyboard. “You never know,” was all he said.

Two days after that, Alex had his answer.

After 28 years, he finally knew the name of his soulmate. It wasn’t Michael.

—

Alex wallowed for a day and then decided he didn’t care. He loved Michael. He’d accepted that long ago no matter how much he’d tried to bury it. Their soulmarks, or lack thereof, didn’t matter. Michael’s species was gone, and with it, more than likely his soulmate. And Michael may not have a mark but none of his people did. For the first time in a decade, Alex wasn’t paralyzed by the fear that Michael was going to die young, before they had any time to be together.

It was just his luck that Michael decided to move on just as Alex got his shit together. 

It was _really_ just his luck that Maria decided after 20 years that Michael Guerin was the Michael on her ribcage. 

Alex understood, he did. Michael needed to be needed and nothing said need like your name etched onto someone’s body. And Maria looked happier than ever, a sense of lightness to her that Alex had seen in others who had recently met their matches. Alex was happy for them, truly. How could he resent someone for the very bond he told himself he didn’t crave? 

He ignored the pain in his chest when Maria started wearing tops that revealed her mark. It was common to display the mark once you’d found your match and she and Michael both seemed sure that he was so really, Alex had no reason to be hurt by it. Besides, he’d seen Maria’s mark plenty of times when they were younger. They’d spent hours considering every Michael they’d ever met, wondering which one was fated to be Maria’s. 

Alex remembered when Maria discounted Michael Guerin the second Liz suggested him when they were 14. He remembered when she did it again when they were 16. And 21. And 26. 

He wasn’t sure what had changed for her to be so sure of it now, but he couldn’t doubt her. Not when she smiled like that. Not when Michael looked at her like _that_.

—

Tripp Manes’ journal was a veritable treasure trove of information. Alex silently thanked the man for writing down everything that he had and for ensuring it was protected all these years. He, Michael, and Isobel sat in the Crashdown pouring over it for hours, analyzing every page, adding each new reveal to the facts they’d already known.

It wasn’t until they got to the last few pages that Alex realized exactly how valuable a find it was.

> _Patricia,_
> 
> _I don’t know how to ask this of you. I’m sure your mother has already told you all of this but in case she wasn’t able for any reason, I want you to finish my mission. Nora asked me to keep the children safe. There are three of them, sleeping in the desert. She says they won’t wake up until June 14, 1997. By that time, I’ll be long gone. Someone needs to look out for them. One of them is Nora’s son. Another is Louise’s daughter, your sister. There is a third child, too, who must be raised well._
> 
> _Please find them, if you can. Make sure they are safe and cared for._
> 
> _Nora was unsure how much they would remember of their lives before, something about their stasis affecting their memories. If they do remember, call them by their names and they should trust you. Louise’s daughter, your sister, is named Vilandra. Nora’s son is called Rath. And the third child is Zan._
> 
> _Nora wrote their names for me once and I’ve transcribed them here as best I can. Hopefully they will recognize the writing if not their names._
> 
> _Keep them safe. Protect them, please._
> 
> _Tripp Manes_

Below each of their birth names was a string of symbols denoting it in their own language. Michael and Isobel leaned over it eagerly, their fingers tracing the curves of their own names. 

Alex sat opposite them staring at the page unblinking. 

“Alex?” Michael asked. Alex looked up slowly, his eyes forced to blink. “Are you okay?”

Alex nodded. “I’m fine.” His voice sounded wrong to his own ears. It clearly didn’t sound any better to the other two if the raised eyebrows were any indication. “I have to go.”

“Wait, Alex!” Michael reached for him but Alex slipped out of the booth before he could grab hold.

He tossed an, “I’ll see you later,” over his shoulder as he escaped out the door. The second he thought he might be out of sight he put a hand over his mark, inexplicably feeling it burn at the touch.

Somehow he ended up at the hospital outside of Maria’s room. He hovered awkwardly in the shadow of the doorway, unsure what to say or even really what he was doing there.

“Alex?” He heard her call. And well, who was he to ignore a woman bed ridden in the hospital? Especially when that woman was Maria.

“Hey,” he greeted softly as he stepped into the room. She was sitting up in bed and looked better than the last time he had seen her. “How are you feeling?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been better. I’ve also been a lot worse so-” she laughed and Alex found himself chuckling along with her.

“You look better,” he told her. She smiled in thanks. “You also look like you’re about to make a break for it.”

“Well,” she shrugged, a grin twisting at her lips. “You gonna cover me?”

“I’ll drive the getaway car,” he promised.

They settled into a comfortable silence as he pulled a chair up next to her bedside. “Thank you for the box.”

Her eyes lit up. “You read the journal? Was it helpful?”

“It was,” he confirmed. “Isobel and Guerin couldn’t get enough of it.” Maria’s face fell at Michael’s name. “Everything okay?”

Maria picked at her hospital bracelet. “We broke up.”

Alex leaned forward in shock. “What? Why? He’s your-” he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

But Maria was already shaking her head. “No, he’s not.” She sniffed. “I wanted him to be but it never felt quite right. It never felt like everyone said it’s supposed to feel. He’s, he’s amazing. And I love him,” she said, slightly apologetic, “but he’s not meant for me. And maybe we could have made it work regardless but we want different things and I need to put myself first, you know? I need to do what’s right for me. So I ended it.”

Alex stood up only to sit back down on her bed. He took her hand in his, not wanting to push. “I’m sorry. I know how much you too care about each other.” His mark burned.

“Yeah. But when it’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be. And I’d rather it end now then continue until we’re both miserable. This way we’re friends, right? No hard feelings, no heartbreak…” She leaned towards Alex and he took it as his cue to wrap his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Alex.”

“What could you possibly be sorry for?”

“That you don’t have a mark,” she confessed quietly. “Even when everything is awful and I’m at my lowest point, I have my mark. _My_ Michael is out there somewhere and we are destined for each other. Knowing that has got me through some hard times. I can’t imagine not having it.”

There was a lump in his throat. “Wanna know a secret?”

“Only if you want to share.”

Alex pressed his forehead to the top of Maria’s head, grateful that she couldn’t see him right now. He’d never told anyone, not in his entire life. “I do have a mark.” Maria stiffened in his arms but she didn’t try to look at him and Alex could’ve wept in gratitude. “My mom covered it up the day I was born and made me promise never to reveal it,” he confessed. “So I didn’t.”

“You’ve had a mark this whole time?” Maria sounded awed. “God, Alex, that’s incredible.” She didn’t ask why he’d lied. It was a good thing too, since Alex knew he couldn’t bring himself to tell her. Not yet.

“Yeah,” he agreed softly. “Incredible.”

—

Michael wasn’t here. Not that Alex was expecting him, that wasn’t the point of this whole endeavor, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want Michael to hear the song Alex had written for him.

Forrest called his name and Alex took his place at the keyboard. He paused a moment to take in a steadying breath, his brother nodding at him in encouragement from the audience, and then he began to play.

Michael appeared not long after he started. Their eyes met across the room and Alex had to smile. There was a look of gentle disbelief on Michael’s face, his eyes alight as he watched Alex, that made Alex feel like he could fly. Any hesitation, any nerves he had left in him, was gone, just like that.

He lost himself in the music for a while and when he looked back, Michael was gone. Isobel was right behind him but she glanced at Alex one last time and he made sure to make eye contact. She shrugged apologetically even as Alex tried to ask her to get Michael back here with his eyes alone. 

She left. And Michael didn’t come back.

Alex finished the song and accepted his applause graciously. He hugged Forrest tightly, thankful for his encouragement to get up on that stage in the first place, and then he followed Michael.

“You’re an idiot!” He heard Isobel before he saw her. 

“Give me my keys, Iz!” Michael’s voice was quieter than Isobel’s.

Alex rounded the corner of the bar to see the siblings standing off in front of Michael’s truck, his keys clutched firmly in Isobel’s hand. “Don’t run away, Michael. It doesn’t suit you.” Alex thought Isobel might actually say tsk tsk, the reprimand was so clear in her voice.

Michael glared at her. “Sure it does.” 

“Guerin.” Alex stepped into the light. Michael turned to him and froze. Isobel, on the other hand, looked positively gleeful as she turned and tossed the keys to him. 

“I leave him in your capable hands.” She flounced back inside, stopping briefly to lay a hand on his shoulder. “By the way, I liked the song.”

Alex and Michael listened to her footsteps fade away, the noise of the bar spilling into the night as she went back inside. 

“Your song was amazing,” Michael exhaled. 

“Thank you,” Alex told him sincerely. He started closing the gap between them in slow, easy steps. Michael didn’t move away. “I wrote it for you. About us.”

Michael closed his eyes. “You can’t say things like that Alex.” It almost sounded like a whine.

“Why not?” Alex shrugged. He stopped moving, nearly close enough to touch Michael if he reached. “It’s the truth.”

“We’re supposed to be moving on.”

“Says who?”

Michael didn’t answer that. “Forrest looked pleased.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “Yeah well he’s been pushing me to get up there for weeks so I imagine he was happy to succeed.”

“You should get back in there then. He’s probably waiting for you.” 

Alex shook his head. “Maybe he is, but I doubt it. I did just publicly sing a love song I wrote about another guy. I can’t imagine he thinks I’m available to start anything with him.”

Michael scrunched up his nose. “Alex, you deserve to be happy.”

“Why are you trying to get me to go back inside?” Alex cocked his head. “Do you really want me to go? Do you really want me to be with someone else?”

“No!” Michael took a small step towards him, his hand floundering in the space between them as he reached for Alex but stopped himself. “I just want you to be happy.”

Alex nodded slowly. “Do you think I’d be happy with my soulmate?”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have a mark.”

“I do, actually.” Alex stifled a smile at the shocked look on Michael’s face. “My mom covered it up when I was born and told me never to tell anyone. Said it was my secret and the world didn’t need to know.”

“So you lied.”

“Yes.” In one careful movement, Alex unclasped the thick band of his watch from his left wrist and bared his skin to Michael’s eyes. “Mom seemed to think that flaunting a mark written in an alien language would be a bad idea. I agreed.”

Michael grabbed his hand and turned his wrist to see it better. Alex let him look. It was the first time anyone had seen it in over 20 years and it was a heady feeling. 

“Alex,” Michael breathed. He looked up at him with wonder in his eyes. “This is-”

Alex smiled. “Imagine my surprise when I saw my mark written in my great-uncle’s journal. In all the Project Shepherd files, I never saw anything that looked like it.” He shrugged. “I did my best to translate it but the translation didn’t mean anything to me. Not until yesterday.”

“This is my name,” Michael said wondrously. “You have _my_ name, Alex.”

“I do,” Alex agreed. “I get to keep you, forever.” He tapped his wrist. “Right here.” He tapped his heart. “And here.”

“Alex,” Michael laughed. “You can’t say shit like that.”

“I’m talking to my soulmate, I get to say ridiculously cheesy lines.”

Michael’s eyes widened. “I’m your soulmate.” He dropped Alex’s hand. “I don’t have a mark, Alex.”

“I know,” Alex reached for him. “None of your people do. It’s a human thing. But I don’t need you to have my name, Michael. Hell, I didn’t need to have your name, it’s just a really great feeling that I do.” He reached up and cupped the back of Michael’s head. “I meant what I wrote in the song. You are the best of me, Michael.”

Michael inhaled shakily. “I think I missed that part.”

“That’s what you get for leaving early.”

“Never again,” Michael promised immediately. He shook his head. “Never again.”

Alex smiled.

“So now what?” Michael asked after a beat of silence. “Where do we go from here?”

“Pizza?” Alex asked. “Grab a movie?”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “You want to go on a date?”

“Why not? We’ve never done it. Might as well give it a shot.”

Michael was quiet. “I just broke up with Maria.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think I can jump right into a new relationship, not even with you. I’m sorry.” 

“So it’s not a date,” Alex shrugged. “We can invite other people, make it a group thing. I just want to spend time with you. We can take it slow. Wait a bit. However you want this to go.”

“I can’t ask you to wait until I’m ready, Alex. That’s not fair.”

“Maybe not. But I’ve found my soulmate, Michael. Nobody else can compare to you, there’s no point in trying.”

Michael groaned and dropped his forehead against Alex’s, his hand gripping Alex’s shirt. “I don’t know if I can handle any more of these lines.”

Alex smirked. “I’m sure you’ll get used to them.”

“I guess I’m going to have to.” Alex hummed in agreement. “I’m okay with that.”

“Good.”


End file.
